False treeing problem

[Taylor]

A 7 year old dog i own has started treeing on loses. She is hunted strickly on bobcats in oregon. Any tips on how to cure this problem would be appreciated. Thanks

[Mountaineer]

I had a walker that started doing the same thing at around that age....only it was on coon and squirrel!! I wondered what was the deal also

[Mike Leonard]

It is hard to say and every case may be different. A lot of times however when a dog gets to be a little older they have a lot of catches and successes under their belt, but some get jealous over other dogs stealing their thunder. They have led the way to the tree many times and had their owners show up there whooping and petting and praising them big time and they like it. Along the way other dogs start to beat them out from time to time on the losses and take the track from them. Maybe the other dogs is faster or a little better at it and so this dog starts to get the praise. So the older dog reasons well I always get petted when I find a tree and so when I run out of track for a bit and junior there gets ahead of me I am just going to grab a tree and everything will be fine.

Pretty hard to break this without losing your marbles at times. Study the situation and get to where you can watch the dogs at times and if this is what is happening and you are sure you have a slick tree, don't go in close, and just get on the track line the other dogs have taken and holler here it is! Here it is! and try to get the dog to come off the tree and take up the track again. you may have to bump them with light stimulation but don't get mad and fry them or they may quit you all together.

If you get it treed just stay back until this dog comes in and locates and they be sure to let them know this is where the good times are. You may however have to split them up, and you have to watch these dogs because they can get young dogs to going in and helping them slick tree.
I have seen older dogs under the same pressure get so jealous that they might even come to the tree and then grab the back track and leave out trailing backwards, and this can really be a pain but with todays good electronics it is not near as bad as it use to be when you had to run them down.

Good luck!

[twist]

Put the boots to her and don't be kind as once they start its its hard to break and some never do. Good way to ruin a bunch of dogs. Andy

[merlo_105]

If your dog false tree's and your dogs are trailing out Tone the dog, if she don't come off and get to trailing bump her pretty good. The dog knows she's wrong so don't be afraid to Bump her. No need to fry her but I would bump her good enough after the tone.

[david]

The dog knows she's wrong

Wow some amazingly helpful posts up there.

And I agree, don't wait around and hope. Do something right away.

There is the dog with emotional problems, or identity crisis, kind of like a human "mid life crisis" when aging people do stupid things to try and appear young still.

But there is also senility that can happen in older dogs that are actually losing their hearin and even eye sight and might be loosing mental faculties. And as a result they start doing things that are uncharacteristic for them, and may even seem kind of crazy.

For example I had an extremely reliable old rig dog go to striking any thing and everything. I can't think of an emotional reason for this. I just think she lost her mind. She was much older than seven though.

At seven, I doubt it is senility. But at seven, I have known of some cat hunters who would start thinking about replacing her simply because, at that age, many hard hunted cat dogs will cease to be helping the pack. They may or may not hurt the pack, but certainly not adding anything significant.

At the same time, that type dog might really be a tremendous help to some one starting out in hounds. And that type dog if switched to coon might make a phenomenal solo coon dog for a young hunter. If she is hunted alone, some of the frustrations Mike outlined will not be an issue for her.

You might try hunting her alone, just to find out if the problem goes away for her.

If it does, it might be time to let her bring some joy to someone who can only own one dog.

And she might even be able to train young dogs on coon for some one, because a coon race might not be long or hard enough to make her feel like she is getting thrown out of the race.

[Gary Roberson]

If you hunt with one of the high powered Treeing Walker competition coon dogs you will get to see a lot of slick trees.
Adios,
Gary

[justahunter]

If you hunt with one of the high powered Treeing Walker competition coon dogs you will get to see a lot of slick trees.
Adios,
Gary

Ain't that the truth!

[Mike Leonard]

Gary,

Your post made me think back to a dog I had a few years back. A young Engineer with a big oil company had moved out here to New Mexico from the Southeast. He had been an avid coonhunter and had been to many big competition hunts and was in the winner's circle numerous times. He had a fine 5 year old Walker male that was a Dual Grand Champion. this dog made Grand Night Champion quickly and he was out of one of the most consistent winning bloodlines in the country today. Due to his work he had to move again and he had heard of me thru the grapevine and possibly even this forum. He contacted me and we met and visited and a very nice young man I must say. He explained his position and that although he hated to he was going to have to get rid of his dog.

I didn't need another dog especially a straight cooner but I decided to buy the dog from him along with a nice dog box and e-collar training system. I had seen coon dogs in the past switch over and make some good big game dogs especially on bear so I figured I could find the dog a good home as he was pressed for time.

This dog Moe was one good looking block headed dog with a big bawl mouth and he handled good. So I figured I would just start exercising him with my dogs and see how things went. I have some really good areas to get out with the dogs and also gives me an opportunity to put some miles on a lot of young horses I usually have in training.

Moe fell right in with the pack and acted like he was having a very good time out in the mountains. But then the problem rose up:

If one of the other hounds would pipe up possibly hitting some varmint scent, be it gray fox or bobcat because some of the younger dogs were still green. Moe would rush to them, rear back and strike with that big old nice bawl mouth and start acting birdy and go into hunt mode. But let one of those pups get ahead of him a bit and open Moe would grab the first likely looking tree and just set down on it like he was looking eye to eye with the devil himself. The other dogs would rush back to him cuz he had one drawing mouth and then they would stand around and look puzzled and sort of slink off when I rode up.

He did not do this one time, he did this every time, he was just not going to be beat on first tree. He wasn't bad trashy and seldom just opened to open but you let another dog strike and he was there to get second strike every time and by gosh he was not going to get beat on first tree.

Oh man this was a bad deal but I could see he was not going to work out for me. I even found some good lion sign and put him down with the other dogs and he wouldn't go 50 yards and he would be hammering the slick wood. He was a competition dog and if the leaves were on thick and the coon scent was hot I can imagine even if you got some circled points sooner or later he was going to rack up enough to be in the money.

Although I am a big game hound guy I have attended and went out with enough casts at money hunts to know how things work. I also found that a good old honest cold strike , cold trail and deliberate accurate locating tree dog might catch a lot of fur but he was not going to win many real night hunts.

[Dan Edwards]

She is gettin old man. It happens to some of them. Had an old jump dog start doin wacky shit when he turned 7 or so I believe. He was just old and crippled and couldn't run with the young bucks so he started doin crazy stuff. Poor ole bastard died within the year so he didn't screw up many hunts. I never really did get mad at him. He kinda earned the right to be pissed off as far as I was concerned.

[david]

The dog knows she's wrong

Mike your story reminded me why I quoted merlo earlier.

I started up the track, got behind and started treeing, I guess.

You guys might have trouble believing this, and I probably wouldn't except it came from some one I have known thirty years and he has never lied about stuff like this.

On of the men he has bought top dogs from out on the east coast sold him a fine coon hound. And the dog had won big at times. But he began as such a chronic false tree dog that he was worthless even for competition. He was wrong about 90% of the time.

The guy knew the dog had all the necessary stuff except for this problem. He knew he might ruin the dog completely, or on the outside chance, fix the problem. But he began to treat a false tree just as he would a trash race, and severely correct the dog accordingly. With the leaves off the trees, he would try to check out the tree from a distance if possible, and if he thought it looked empty, shock the dog from a distance.

He said it worked! He said those dogs usually know it when they are wrong, and this one figured out that when he was wrong he would get shocked.

It would be pretty hard for me to try this method on a good old seven year old that had served me well.

But if I was having to decide to end the hunting career of an otherwise good young dog for this problem, it sure would be worth a try.

That dog went from being 90% wrong to being almost completely accurate and made a fine dog.

Ray Mears taught me, back in the eighties, never to discipline a dog at the tree. So this certainly goes against this rule. But might be called for as a last ditch effort.

[al baldwin]

Can/t recall hunting with a dog or pack of dogs for a long period of time on bobcat that did not get an empty tree once in a while. It has been my experience that makes me believe any dog or dogs that never have a false tree are leaving a few cats up that they never located. Yes I have seen dogs become prone to false tree as they aged, seven is a little young for them to start false treeing in my opinion. I have never figured out why dogs become prone to false treeing in later years. How can a hunter know old dogs start false treeing because they are jealous of the young dogs that out run them? But then how can I know for sure hunters who believe this are incorrect in their belief. However do agree kick that old dogs butt like they are trashing, have seen vast improvement in some cases. If you don/t correct this habit quick it will get worse in a hurry. False treeing on bobcat here can be a difficult thing to correct, at times have looked for an hour or so before locating a bobcat. Read all these post, use your best judgement & good luck. Al

[Leapordcur1]

7 to young for that horse crap butt sum get taken by age sooner.
JOE MONTANA aiint playing foot ball in to his 60.s

[1bludawg]

If she just started doing it i would have to guess that old age is the problem.When they can't keep up anymore some will start slick treeing.
I've had 2 females that went out at 8 years old .I wasn't expecting it and sure didn't like it but old age didn't care what i liked.

[Bear hounder]

I treat every slick tree as a trash tree but you have to decide what works for each dog and what your relationship is with your dogs how much you know that dog . I've seen a good dog slick tree before because he had a bad injury that he was recovering from and could not drive the track hard and be in the lead he was tired and being lazy to I guess but I did give him a tounge lashing and took a stick and started hitting the tree and he cowardly put his head down and started away from the tree he new he was wrong but with that dog he new me and I new him I can't remember him slick treeing again on other dogs that have slick treed I give them some severe incouragment to not do it again because I know that dog needs that in order to change maybe that dog is more independent that being said I've only hunted hounds for bears so their is a differents between a dog slick treeing a cat track and a dog that says sorry boss I thought I had a 200 pounder up in this tree that is 3km from the closest 4 wheeler trail I don't know how far a cat hunter walks to a slick tree but that would have to be factored in to your choice of training program. I never dicapline a dog unless I can prove that tree is empty in the case that the other dogs keep going on a track I would agree to go to the track were the dogs kept going and call the dog over to the right track but I would not let that happen very often be slow to anger or . If your always blowing up at the dog then that is the norm for them so they don't understand then how dis pleased u are and u are now the slick treeing retarded babble mouth that blows up every time your dog farts but if you use dicapline only when it's fair your dogs know you as fair any how keep looking up

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